Kilometres Are Taking Over!!

[Paddy_NL]

Essex County Council put up some height restriction 'low bridge' signs near to me a couple of years ago, with the height in both feet and metres.
They were found to be in breach of the regs Leftie mentions and had to permanently black out the 'x metres' bit.

As mentioned before, it would be handy if those bridges were in metres and centimetres as well. Or put a sign at every port of entry into the UK, stating what 4.0 metres in feet, toes and nails actually is. Why 4.0 metres? As it's per "continental" law trucks aren't allowed to be higher. I believe 4.0 is equivilant to 13.6 ft, which I found out "en route" through the UK halfway in the nineties.

By the way, nastiest thing I ever came across was a hired trailer without any height mentioned (temping work in the UK). Went south bound through the Blackwall to unload at a supermarket in the south of London. Came back through that same Blackwall tunnel, only to find out the steel barrier was a little too low for my trailer (which is quite an ear distructive sound!). Drove in the "middle lane" all the way through the tunnel

[Lorry]

You think that the Blackwall tunnel is bad.  I was taking a coachload of tourists around London, and had a friend do the Canary Wharf area.  Well, he'd always gone there by taxi, and when we got to the Rotherhithe tunnel, the bus driver slammed the brakes on, as a taxi is a tight squeeze, and this was a high deck luxury coach

[Lord Pig-Pen]

Essex County Council put up some height restriction 'low bridge' signs near to me a couple of years ago, with the height in both feet and metres.
They were found to be in breach of the regs Leftie mentions and had to permanently black out the 'x metres' bit.

Now that is stupid. I thought Holland was the only European country in wich rules and regulations were held up that rigourously 

If it had only mentioned metres and not feet I would have agreed, but just adding the height in metres only makes things easier for people from other countries.

I was in an amusement park somewhere near London quite a few years ago and there was a sign next to one of the rides saying passengers must weigh less than a certain number of stones. So I asked this guy if that were little pebbles or big rocks, then he thought I was crazy...

Then he saw Albert!

[jpchenet]

The thing that I find a tad stupid.  My car will tell me how much fuel I've used since I filled up.  It tells me in Gallons.  However, You can only buy fuel by the Litre.
So I have no idea how much fuel is left.  So it's a waste of time.   I supose I could do a calculation but surely the whole idea is so you don't need to calculate these things.



t.

Especially as (IIRC) you drive a French Car?

[Leftie]

The thing that I find a tad stupid.  My car will tell me how much fuel I've used since I filled up.  It tells me in Gallons.  However, You can only buy fuel by the Litre.
So I have no idea how much fuel is left.  So it's a waste of time.   I supose I could do a calculation but surely the whole idea is so you don't need to calculate these things.
t.

Especially as (IIRC) you drive a French Car?

My car tells me how many miles I have left, quick its the Kms. The motor is 12 yrs old.

I would sugest buying an old Beemer.

[Leftie]

Essex County Council put up some height restriction 'low bridge' signs near to me a couple of years ago, with the height in both feet and metres.
They were found to be in breach of the regs Leftie mentions and had to permanently black out the 'x metres' bit.

Now that is stupid. I thought Holland was the only European country in wich rules and regulations were held up that rigourously 

If it had only mentioned metres and not feet I would have agreed, but just adding the height in metres only makes things easier for people from other countries.

I was in an amusement park somewhere near London quite a few years ago and there was a sign next to one of the rides saying passengers must weigh less than a certain number of stones. So I asked this guy if that were little pebbles or big rocks, then he thought I was crazy...

Then he saw Albert!

Come on Albert, show us your face.

[Muzorewa]

Is this the thin edge of the wedge??

Driving down the M5 today, which I havn't done for a couple of weeks, and saw there are new signs every half a kilometre, with a count up (or down - depending on which way you are travelling) in kilometres from (presumably) the start of the motorway in the midlands.  Thus Taunton is just over 200km from the start of the M5.

I thought that they were going to leave our 'miles' alone.

Del

From the Department of Transport website:

Driver information signs.  These have been introduced at regular intervals along many motorways and some other roads so that, in the event of a vehicle breakdown or other emergency, the exact location can be identified quickly.  They show the motorway or road number, the carriageway identifier and a distance reference.

[Perdu]

ANORAK alert

The information on the signs just copies the information on the white marker posts that have always marked the distance from the start of any motorway. Because these have been based on the distances from each post they have always referred to the basic 100 meter unit. If I remember the one at the junction of the M6 and M1 was something like 196.5 and the M6 numbering carried on the sequence so that it showed the distance from the start of the M1 in that London as 196 (maybe km!) and as the fifth post in that sequence. 200.0 comes somewhere near Wednesbury.

I have an extensive collection of dayglo anoraks from my days when I worked for a certain motoring organisation and was responsible for annoting all these numbers into our database so we could find lost members as quickly as possible.

markers from the start of  the motorway are numbered  as 1234A to show (we always said!) that it was AWAY from the start and 1234B to show it as being BACK to the beginning.

SO we did all that research and filling up a huge database to discover that people wouldnt get out of their car to look at the number for us so we can find  them straight off (only 50 yards away any direction, max!) and then within a couple of years it all went titsupp when Global Positioning data was released into the satnav systems...


Now shall I waffle about phone boxes on the motorways?

No, begger that!

[Leftie]

As they don't specifically state Km,  the authorities could quite easily say they are groats (or whetever).  And as they are simply distance, perhaps location markers, there is nothing to enforce.  The southbound ones have an 'A' and the northbound a 'B', so I guess they are location markers for the emergency services.  "There is an RTA at A196.5"  for example.

Del

Del, you summise correctly.

Legally, they are the same as the plastic markers but more prominent and easily viewed at high speed by the Emergency Services.

A note to Perdu, marker posts are at 100m, have you measured them? They vary between 80-120m generally, although on the Stafford section of M6 J12-15, there are some 150+m apart (I know, I put them there!!). Over 200 miles the maximmum 'creep' can be about a kilometer, sorry, 5/8ths of a mile.

When these were introduced, the location was governed by a point on the central reserve and then transpossed to either side of the motorway so it could form a cross-section.

The 'gap' would enlarge and reduce depending on the horizontal curvature and side of the carriageway.

It is very rare to set these out with a measuring wheel nowadays. These days you have the element of an additional 'measurement creep' as everything is 'set out' horizontally and not catering for gradients.

[Perdu]

I sorta knew from my anoraky time that they were 100m and that as all they do is give datum data they were outside Legislative dooberryness

And now, wow, at last I find someone else who knows about these things

The ones up by Stafford were noticed, I thought the "doer" must have been piddled when he done them...

Now of course I takes it all back



If I had still been in the employ of my old people I would have been much happier with the new versions

But idiot people broken down would still be refusing to walk a short step to get the number so we could find tham and HELP them

People are their own worst enemy aint they...